


Diēs Caniculārēs

by shinealightonme



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Mild Hooliganism, Missing Scene, Snark, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 08:41:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13314564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme
Summary: It's a thousand degrees, the power's out everywhere, and Noah wants her to hang out with Ronan Lynch. This is not how Blue's summer was supposed to go.





	Diēs Caniculārēs

**Author's Note:**

> Written for trc-exchange on tumblr for onixiage, who wanted to read about the bromance between Blue, Ronan, and Noah. I hope you enjoy this!
> 
> Set in the early part of the summer between The Raven Boys and The Dream Thieves.

Summer, Blue decides, is nothing but false advertising.

It's supposed to herald grand things: beaches, crop tops, cans of beer wet with condensation, first love, reckless decisions made with no regard for consequences.

Blue has, at most, half of one of those things. And it isn't that she _wants_ the rest; bare midriffs aren't her style, beer smells gross, sand gets stuck between her toes, and she never can forget about consequences. Mostly what she wants at this moment is to wrap herself up in a bear skin so tightly that she becomes a bear, like a selkie with empowerment, and then she'd hibernate through the summer until it stopped being so hot and humid that she could feel her elbows sweat. Elbows are _not_ supposed to sweat.

And on top of these new frontiers of perspiration, their power keeps going out.

"We could light candles," Persephone says, upside down and dreamy.

"The last thing we need is another heat source." Calla points threateningly at Persephone with the hand holding her drink. The adults had decided that the _first_ thing they needed was a glass full of ice each, with plenty of gin and tonic to keep it company. Blue had not been permitted to join in this cooling strategy; summer is a _lie_. "And I will not stand for you turning this house into some cliché séance out of a Hollywood film."

"Do not pretend that a candle is going to melt you like the Wicked Witch of the West." Maura is sprawled out over one entire couch, eyes shut and occasionally flicking a handheld fan at her face. She isn't trying too hard with it; they're all a couple of glasses-of-ice in.

"There's a thought." Calla fixes her eyes on Blue. "Child. Go fetch a bucket of water and dump it over me."

"You'd ruin the carpet if you got melting psychic on it," Blue says, "and anyway, I'm late."

"Late for what?" Maura calls as she leaves the room.

Blue pops in just long enough to light a single candle and say, "I haven't decided yet," before swanning back out.

"She gets that attitude from you, Calla Lily Johnson," she hears Maura say behind her.

It's cooler outside the house, thanks to the breeze, but only just. The sun is low in the sky, shining directly into her eyes. Gansey had stepped on her sunglasses three days before. He'd apologized profusely and offered to buy her replacements, but she'd put her foot down -- metaphorically, not in the remains of her late lamented shades. She could only _imagine_ what sunglasses Gansey would have come up with, left to his own devices. Some Gucci or Dior monstrosity. Or he'd go too far in the other direction, buy her a helicopter helmet or driving goggles or some other thing that she would never wear. Blue is whimsical, not insane.

She walks to the thrift store, in the absence of anything better to do, only to discover that it's closed -- lost power, along with several other stores on the street. A fourteen-year-old with a name tag and an ice cream scoop is nearly in tears in front of the drug store, telling his manager "but it's all melting!"

Blue clearly isn't going to get any new sunglasses today. Or any Italian subs, or lotto tickets, or pints of beer. It looks like _everyone_ lost power. These constant blackouts are really doing a number on Henrietta's economy, to the extent that Henrietta has an economy. Which leaves her with the question of what she's going to do with herself. Home is boozy and, if she knows her mother, very shortly to be infested with high-volume ABBA, blackout or no blackout. St. Agnes is on the wrong side of town, and anyway she isn't sure she'd be welcome there -- Adam had moved himself in, informed her after the fact, and hadn't mentioned it since.

She realizes she's already made her decision, so she tugs down the hem of her non-crop-top top and points her feet toward Monmouth.

She climbs up the stairs to the second floor entrance and knocks. No answer.

Just as she's about to knock again, she hears a loud crash.

She freezes -- just long enough to think about the fact that two rich kids are openly living in an absurdly easy to break into old factory. Just long enough to think about Adam's quiet belief that other people are interested in the search for Glendower.

Just long enough to remember that one of those people had already kidnapped Gansey and tried to shoot him.

She tries the doorknob, not daring to breathe. Finds that it's open. Pushes the door slowly inward, crouching low so anyone in the room won't immediately spot her in the illuminated doorway.

There's no one in the room.

She steps in and closes the door behind her, still crouched low to the ground. She's going to feel like such an idiot if it was just an old piece of machinery falling over downstairs, but better than feeling like an idiot because she got shot by an intruder.

There's another loud noise -- _smash!_ \-- from down the hall. She casts her eyes around the main room quickly and spots the heavy wooden oar that Gansey had gotten from the rowing crew at the end of the school year, trophy for the team captain. He's going to be unbearably sad if she breaks it, but there's no other likely looking weapons in the room.

She wraps her hands around the oar and lifts it up. It's twice as tall as she is. She holds it propped in front of her like a knight's lance.

Then she tiptoes as quickly as possibly down the hallway and finds --

\-- Ronan Lynch, sitting on the floor of his bedroom, smashing a television with a hammer.

Blue restrains herself. If Gansey would be insufferable because she broke his rowing memorabilia, how much sadder would he be if she _murdered his best friend with it._

It's still really tempting, though.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Ronan just looks at her, dead cool, and brings the hammer back down on the screen of the television. _Smash!_ It's one of those ancient old boxy TVs. Bits go flying up into the air.

"You're the one trespassing."

"You left your door unlocked," Blue says. She doesn't actually say, _idiot_ , but she thinks she's made it pretty clear.

"So clearly I was having a party." _Smash!_

Blue scowls. "Where's Gansey?"

Ronan doesn't answer.

Blue swings the oar forward so that she can nudge Ronan's shoulder, without having to touch him or even enter the room. She decides that she loves this stupid eighty-foot-long oar.

"He's in DC," Ronan says, with a mighty sigh, like it is costing him the pain of a lifetime to speak to her. "With Parrish. Some fucking 'future leaders of America' field trip."

Well, damn. Not what Blue was hoping for. All of her decisions are leading to dead-ends today.

"I won't bother to ask why you weren't invited along."

"Hey," Ronan says. "I've got some shit I could say to politicians."

"Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of."

Ronan waves at her sarcastically with the hammer. "So, that's all. You can go now."

Blue had been about to leave anyway, but getting _booted_ out of the stupid broken old factory apartment is one indignity to many. "Are you allergic to being nice?"

"Dunno. Why risk trying it and finding out that I am?"

"Great." Blue turns around to leave, which is awkward as hell when she's still holding a piece of wood that's three times as long as the width of the hallway.

When she finally gets turned around, she sees that Noah has popped into existence behind her.

Finally, something has gone _right_ today.

"Blue!" he launches forward to hug her, twirling her around in the process. He has a lot of strength, for a ghost.

She laughs and tries to hug him. It means ditching the oar, and she maybe hears it _thud_ in a way that portends chips and cracks, but hey, at least she didn't murder any of Gansey's loved ones with it.

"Hi, Noah." She reaches up with her newly freed hand to pet his hair, which earns her a laugh.

"Blue, you're here! Why are you here?"

"Nothing better to do, I guess." She can just see Ronan over Noah's shoulder. If she didn't know better than to suspect Ronan Lynch of having _feelings_ , she'd say he looked jealous.

"Let's hang out!" Noah enthuses.

"It's too hot for _hanging out_ ," Ronan argues.

Blue is feeling remarkably cooler now, with Noah leeching heat out of her skin.

"At least you guys have power," she argues back. "Half the town's blacked out. Apparently all the ice cream in the drug store is all melting."

"Oh!" Noah lets her go, dances into Ronan's room to grab his extremely unenthused wrist. "We should go get some! They're probably giving it away, if it's melting."

"Oh -- " Blue starts.

"Uh -- " Ronan says, at the same time.

Blue snaps her mouth shut. Catches Ronan's eye over Noah's shoulder.

She raises an eyebrow at him, waiting for him to point out that Noah is dead, that Noah doesn't eat, that ghosts don't need ice cream to stay cool.

But all he does is shrug and say, "Yeah, whatever."

Blue is _not_ going to be ruder than _Ronan Lynch_.

"Yeah, that sounds great."

So Blue ends up walking back to Main Street with the angriest boy in the world and an oblivious ghost. ABBA sounds better and better by the minute.

The red-eyed fourteen-year-old is all too happy to sell them ice cream at a seventy-five percent discount. Blue almost wishes he'd refused; the melting ice cream is a hideous runny mess. Ronan ends up with chocolate over half his face. Since Noah isn't eating any at all, it runs down his entire arm. She has tissues in her pocket, but she doesn't see any point in busting them out until the guys are done eating, since there will just be more mess to come.

"Vanilla," Ronan sneers at her. "Real exciting."

Blue licks her ice cream cone and decides, loftily, that she'll tolerate Ronan's presence for Noah's sake, with all the self-righteous composure of a divorced mother running onto her ex in front of her kid.

Ronan _immediately_ tests her resolve by grabbing a rock up off the ground and hurling it at a parked car.

The rock misses, by a foot, probably because Blue bumps into Ronan right as he's letting fly.

"What was that for?"

"Nice, Sargent," Ronan says. He takes a step toward the car.

Blue puts herself in his way, draws a breath in to demand an explanation.

"Oh, poor guy," she hears Noah say from behind her.

Blue turns her face around just enough to see Noah pressing his nose up against the window of the car that had drawn Ronan's wrath.

Something moves inside of it.

She shoots Ronan a warning look, and then steps up close to the car to see -- 

\-- a puppy sprawled out along the back seat of the car, head down on his paws and tongue sticking out. His sides are visibly heaving as he pants.

"It's a _billion degrees_ ," Blue fumes. "Who leaves a dog in a car with the windows up?"

"An asshole," Ronan says, reaching to pick another rock up off the ground.

Blue kicks the rock out of his reach.

"You can't just break someone's window."

"Why not?" Ronan demands. "Because it's someone's property and I'm supposed to _respect_ that?"

"No, because that's the same side of the car that the dog is on and you're going to get broken glass on him." She sticks her fists on her hips and glares. "Not to mention someone could _see you_ and call the cops. Noah and I will go stand look out and you'll break the other window, genius."

Ronan glares at her, as ugly as she has ever seen him, but he doesn't argue the point.

"You don't want to do it yourself, little Miss Know It All?"

"That's _Ms._ Know It All, and no, I'm perfectly happy to let you get in trouble."

"Fine."

"Fine." Blue stomps off to the corner, looks both ways down the street. There's no one coming; the town's dead, probably thanks to the blackout.

She whistles an all clear.

From somewhere down the street, she hears Noah whistle an all clear too.

A second later she hears the sound of breaking glass.

She doesn't look over right away, because she's supposed to be the lookout, but there's still no one coming and she figures the biggest risk was the actual moment of window-breaking, so she turns around in time to see Ronan pull the dog out of the car.

She checks the street again, but seriously, Henrietta, _dead_ , and there's a limit to how much she trusts Ronan with an imperiled animal. She jogs back over to the car just as Ronan sits down on the sidewalk with the dog on his lap.

"He's thirsty," Ronan says. That much is obvious; the dog is literally trying to lick the sweat off Ronan's arm. Ronan gently nudges him away from the hand with the smudges of chocolate on it, but makes no move to stop him from licking his other arm. Blue supposes someone with Ronan's hygenie wouldn't really care about a little dog slobber.

"He needs water." Her eyes flick about, looking for something they could give the dog, and land a fire hydrant ten feet down the sidewalk.

She immediately realizes that's a dumb idea, but not before Ronan catches her looking and sneers at her.

"I thought we were going for subtle."

Blue holds her ice cream cone out to the dog, glad that she opted for vanilla. "Like you know what subtle means."

"Hey! Kids!"

Blue whips her head around to the end of the street, where Noah _had_ been standing guard. Instead of him, there's an annoyed looking man in a suit, and a pink smudge on the sidewalk, as though an ice cream cone had been dropped several feet.

"Oh, crud."

"Let's have the guy who flicks in and out of existence stand guard," Ronan says, " _that_ was a great idea."

"You have a better one?"

"Yeah." Ronan pushes himself up off the ground with one hand, wraps his arms around the dog, and books it down the street.

Because what today _really_ needed was _running_. Because she _wasn't sweaty enough already_.

Forget rain forests. When Blue is an environmental activist she is going to work on the ice caps. Polar bears, endless days, the stark majesty of the arctic sea, and absolutely no elbow sweat.

For now, though, she chases after Ronan.

The guy in the suit only makes a token attempt at following them, but they keep running for several blocks anyway, ducking through the alley behind Nino's and coming to a stop by the tiny little park on Oak Street.

"We lost him," Ronan says, setting the dog down at his feet where he instantly flops over onto his side.

"We lost him and we _lost Noah_ ," Blue points out.

"He'll turn up," but he doesn't sound sure of that.

The dog whines.

"We lost Noah and we gained a dog," Blue sighs. She drops down to squat on her heels and holds her hand out. The dog sniffs at it and licks the last of the ice cream off her fingers; she'd dropped her cone when she started running.

Ronan walks over to the park's water fountain; pushes the button with his hip and cups his hands together to catch water. He ferries it over to the dog, who all but inhales it, and then he stands up to get more water.

Blue watches, bemused, as Ronan makes several trips back and forth. She keeps waiting for him to get tired of taking care of the dog, but he doesn't. She supposes it's less work than raising a baby bird. And it's got to be less annoying than putting up with Ronan Lynch, which she's managed to do all afternoon.

After a half-dozen handfuls of water the dog stands up and starts sniffing around them. He seems particularly taken with Blue, nudging her repeatedly with his nose and wagging his tail at her.

"I thought dogs were supposed to be _loyal_ ," Ronan grumbles. "I'm the one that saved you."

"Dogs are also very intelligent," Blue says, and pats the dog on the head, just to be annoying.

"I'm going back to Monmouth to see if Noah's there." Ronan wipes his hands on his pants. "You and Dynamite can do whatever."

"You cannot call the dog Dynamite."

"Why not?"

"Because -- " Blue maneuvers around the dog's happy attempts to jump at her face just long enough to get a look at his collar. The tag has no owner ID info, just a name: _Fluffy_. "Yeah, okay, Dynamite is fine."

"Of course it is." Ronan whistles, loud enough that Blue winces, and succeeds in getting Dynamite's attention. He trots over to sniff at Ronan's shoes. "C'mon, we're ghost hunting."

Blue rolls her eyes, but she's also worried about Noah, so she follows Ronan and the twice-unfortunately-christened dog back to Monmouth.

The dog races ahead of them up the stairs and barks loudly at the door, jumping up and down like he can open it himself -- which he almost could, Blue discovers when Ronan twists the doorknob and pushes the door in, letting Dynamite charge straight into the building.

"You didn't lock the door when you left?"

"No."

Blue sighs. Her idiot friends are all definitely going to get murdered.

They find Dynamite and Noah teetering besides Gansey's miniature Henrietta, Dynamite up with his front paws on Noah's torso, trying to sniff his face.

"Hey, you got the dog," Noah says. His face falls. "Oh, but the ice cream's all gone."

"Yeah," Ronan says, "Dynamite's a real pig."

Noah looks horrified. "You can't feed a dog chocolate!" He looks down and places his hands on either side of Dynamite's face, like he can stare the poison out of him.

Dynamite takes the opportunity to lick Noah's cheek.

"Relax," Blue says. "He didn't really. Ronan is a responsible and thoughtful young man."

Ronan glares at her, utterly betrayed. "I almost thought you were cool, Sargent."

"Wow, you were wrong about something," Blue says, monotonous. "How will we all adjust to the shock."

Ronan hmphs.

Noah smiles, his joy as fragile and inconstant as his self. "Well, at least now we have a dog."

"We're not going to keep it," Blue says. "I'll take him to animal rescue or something."

"Do you really have to?" Noah asks. "I think he likes me."

Dynamite has slobbered over Noah's entire face; he either loves him or is planning on eating him. It is sort of sad to think of taking the dog away from Noah.

Then Blue thinks about leaving a dog in the hands of three boys who think that the kitchen and the bathroom should be _the same room._

"We can't just steal a dog."

"News flash, Sargent," Ronan says. "We already did."

"We _liberated_ a dog. That's not the same thing."

"So you can do whatever you want as long as it sounds good?"

"And you'll do anything you feel like as long as it sounds bad?"

Noah sighs. "Can't you two just get along?"

Blue makes eye contact with Ronan, watches him for a second. Sees him working through the same thought process she is.

"Nope," she declares.

"Never," he says at the same time.

"Absolutely not," she adds for good measure.

Ronan smirks in a way that is not, when you get right down to it, totally unfriendly.

-

"Uh, guys? I think maybe we should take the dog somewhere after all. There's about to be a flood on Main Street," and then they all have to entice the dog out of Monmouth before he can ruin Gansey's town model.

 _Some_ teenagers have glamorous summer vacations. Partying and dancing and skinny dipping in the moonlight.

But that just leads to sore feet and hangovers and mosquito bites in awkward places. Blue is fine right where she is, thanks.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this fic, you can [reblog it on tumblr](http://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/169474084415/di%C4%93s-canicul%C4%81r%C4%93s-shinealightonme-raven-cycle).


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